


In Those Forests We Will Howl

by Isagel



Category: World of Warcraft
Genre: M/M, Werewolf Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-31
Updated: 2011-01-31
Packaged: 2017-10-15 06:44:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/158107
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Isagel/pseuds/Isagel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A night in Darnassus between friends reunited, the same and different from who they were. (Set shortly after the evacuation of Gilneas at the end of the Worgen starting zone.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Those Forests We Will Howl

It is hard to think of Darnassus as the great city he knows it to be, when everything is tree and moss and water, the rustling of wind in the branches, the crumbling of leaves beneath the tread of his boots, the lives of the people lived in natures embrace. Darius understands this place better now, he thinks, than he ever could have done before he was bitten, before he was a wild animal, before the druids performed their magic and restored the equilibrium within him, ensured the clarity of his mind, but he still finds himself longing for cobbled streets beneath his feet, for the familiar echo of his steps between the walls of houses built from brick and wood and stone, lines upon lines of them, closing him in.

The Gilnean people are safe in this city, the refugees treated well by the elves, far from the horrors of the war and the tumultuous ordeal of the evacuation, but his is not to stay here long. A few more days, and he will return to Silverpine, to the troop of brave and faithful waiting there on the borders of their homeland under Lorna's command, ready to do what he does best and lead them in the fight for their own city, bring them together beneath the hope of reclaiming her, the spires of her cathedrals and the dirt of her slums and everything in between that all belongs to them, that will be theirs again.

But tonight he is here, in this odd land of the elves, and if the calm here only heralds the storm he is heading into, then, still, there are people he wishes to spend time with, in this quiet, before and after everything.

Well, not people.

One man.

The moonlight makes the small pond shimmer like a silver coin among the shadows of the greenery, bright and otherworldly. As he approaches, the first Darius sees of the king is another flash of silver, the white of his hair caught out in the light. Another few yards along the waterline, and he can make out the dark bulk of the man, sitting on the ground with his knees drawn up in front of him, his back against the root of a giant tree, looking out over the water. Darius sits down beside him, stretching his legs out in the grass. As he settles, Genn gives him a sideways look, but it's too dark to read his eyes, and then they're turned away, facing straight ahead again.

For long minutes, there is silence and the moonlight, and the song of unseen forest birds. The pond is out of the way; no one comes here this time of night.

When he closes his one eye, he can still feel the moonlight, like an itch for something beneath the surface of his skin, vivid like the warmth of Genn's body is vivid, so close by his side.

“Makes you want to howl, doesn't it?” Genn says.

He looks over, and there is Genn's face, tilted up towards the moon, human and aging and strong, and, by the Light, but he is still beautiful, even now, marked by so many years of battle and all this sorrow. Maybe more beautiful, because there is a gentleness in his features now that Darius doesn't remember. Not in the king who sent him to prison, not in the man who used to take him to bed.

“I've howled for a great many things in my life,” he says.

Genn turns, then, and looks at him.

“For the land I took from you to build the wall,” he says. “For the injustice done to your people for the greater good of Gilneas. For every bad decision I made in my eagerness to keep the kingdom I love apart from the conflicts raging around us.” He reaches his hand out, lays it on Darius's shoulder. The touch is warm and heavy. “For your freedom when I took that from you, too. I see that now, how wrong I was to think that I could protect our nation from the evils of the greater world, if only I made the right sacrifices. When I go to Stormwind, I will try to rectify some of that by offering what forces Gilneas still has in aid of the Alliance. I should have done that a long time ago. You were right to rage against my isolationist folly.” It's strange, but though he's seen all of this in the king's actions since the day he was freed from prison, it's different to hear it in words. He tries to think of what he wants to say in return, but his throat feels too tight for speech. And then Genn goes on: “But the sacrifice I felt most keenly, in my own heart, was the loss of your friendship, Darius, your loyalty. The wolf inside me still howls now at the thought that I may never be able to rectify that.”

It is Darius's turn then to look away, to gaze out across the water of the pond. Genn's hand is still on his shoulder, his thumb resting just below his collarbone, a point of heat sinking down through his shirt. His heart is beating faster than he thinks his human chest can handle.

“When you came to us, to your people, in the forest back in Gilneas,” he says, and it comes out slowly, the words to explain this hard to find. “When you came, and you revealed to us that you, too, had been changed, that you were like us still, one of us, in this as in everything, the wolf in me, it wanted... All it wanted was to...”

A beat of silence, and then Genn says, very softly, but with that forceful insistence of a king, as though every answer is his due:

“What did you want to do, Darius? Show me.”

And Darius can't find the words, but he's always found that actions speak louder. When the king refused to listen, he spoke with blade and bombs and gunpowder. Now the king is listening, and all he needs is his own body, the desire in his animal heart for one single gesture.

He lets himself shift into his worgen form, feels his skin become fur, his teeth become fangs. Then he rolls over, on his back in the grass, and bares his neck.

He looks up at Genn, tilts his head back to expose as much jugular as possible.

“My king,” he says, and it's been so long, since he swore his allegiance and believed it. “You have my loyalty.”

Genn is kneeling at his side now, looking at him with a strange kind of wonder, and he lifts his callused human hand and lays it around Darius's throat, not squeezing, but holding, his grip firm and sure.

“Darius,” he says. “As the leader of our pack, believe me, there is no one whose service I would rather have.” He pushes, just a little, the heel of his hand against the hollow of Darius's throat. “You would never bare your neck to anyone but me, would you?” he asks, and though he is still in human form, Darius can hear the animal growl in his voice. The predator, the alpha male.

“It was always yours,” Darius says, pressing up, pressing his Adam's apple into Genn's hand. If Genn turned worgen, all he would need would be his claws to rip it out.

Even when he was in prison, Darius always knew that Genn would never have him killed. Would never kill him. Some things are simply truths.

“Mine,” Genn echoes, and the word is feral, but also filled with marvel, as though he can't quite believe what he is hearing, what he is seeing.

Darius thinks of himself at twenty-four, a young lord just risen to the king's council; of Genn in those days - older, but still new to the throne. Thinks of that boy he was, invited into the king's company, into his confidence, the way the king would listen to his arguments, even when he disagreed, of all the good they did together for their people. And he thinks of days spent away from the city, of hunting trips to Greymane Manor and afternoon's whiled away over chess, the sunlight falling golden and red through the manor's stained glass windows across the board between them, making black and white seem less like opposites, the dividing lines blurred out in fire and warmth. Thinks of the queen pressing her lips to his forehead in blessing and the way his heart skipped, realizing what that meant. And then at night, the king's bed in the light of an oil lamp, lying back on the sheets as he's lying back now, the red hair he wore so ridiculously long then falling loosened over the pillows, the king's hands holding his wrists to the mattress and, oh, how Darius had arced to meet him, how he'd wanted to feel the weight of him bearing down, the unbreakable solidity of the king keeping him there, no matter how he struggled.

Maybe later on, when they fought for real and Darius took up arms, became a rebel, maybe on some level that was still what he wanted. For the king to hear him, yes, for the king to be forced to listen and change his mind, but somewhere he had always known that the king would keep him down, would not let him go too far. He was a soldier now, a warrior for the causes he believed in, fiercer and more skilled than most, but the one opponent he had never wanted to break was the king.

His king.

“Take me as yours, then,” he says. “The way you used to. Teach me to obey you again, to give myself for your pleasure.”

“Darius,” Genn says again, shaking his head, but then his hand loosens around Darius's throat, his fingers trailing down into the open v of his shirt. “Stay like this,” he adds, and Darius doesn't know whether he means 'keep still' or 'keep this form', but he does both, lying there in the cool grass as his king undoes the remaining buttons on his shirt, folding it back to run his hands over the sleek fur on his chest.

Strong fingers kneading into muscle, mapping the shape of his body beneath the worgen coat, and in this form Darius can smell Genn, the scent of him as palpable as his touch. It's a familiar, well-known scent, but so much richer now, deeper to his new senses than it ever was to him as a human. It's a scent that says 'leader', that says 'mate', and there is a note in it now of arousal, thickening with every moment, the headiness of it making his own body quiver with need.

Darius digs the claws of his hands into the ground and lets out a whine, a whimper like a pleading dog. He hasn't had relations with anyone in this body yet, and the sensations are overwhelming, the intensity of his lust more than he can hide.

“Yes,” Genn says, and his hands stroke down Darius's sides, fingernails combing through fur, until they reach the fastenings of his trousers. “It's strange to think, isn't it? All that time, I feared the worgen attackers, I was repulsed by their appearance, that unnatural blend of human and beast. But I look at you now, and all I can think is that you are magnificent. It suits you, this shape. My ferocious Darius that I could never tame, the one who would do my bidding only when it was his heart's desire.” He pulls at Darius's trousers, undone now, and Darius lifts his hips to let him pull them down, revealing his erection. A wolf's erection: thick, bare flesh rising from its fur-covered sheath. Genn makes a soft, hungry sound and takes it in his hand, his fingers wrapping tight around the shaft. Darius thrusts into his grip, unable to contain himself, and he feels the blood in his body rush down to fill him further: the length of his cock, different and larger than his human one, the knot at the base. Genn strokes him, a slow, steady pull of his fist, up to the tip, all the way down. Excruciating. Blissful. “I will send you out,” he says, “and the sound of your howl will make the orcs quake in their beds at night. I will send you out, and your claws will be the nightmare of the Forsaken, the grip of your fangs the terror of the Horde. I will send you out, and everywhere our enemies will know that Gilneas has not yielded, that we will always rise to fight back. As you rose against me, time and time again.”

“My lord,” Darius says, and he is panting now, straining to take what he is given. “Command me.”

Genn's free hand comes up, then, to touch his face, to cup his cheek. Darius turns his head, instinct like necessity, and nuzzles into his palm, licks at his skin to taste that dizzying scent, fill himself with it.

Genn's hand stills on his cock.

“Turn over,” he says, patting Darius's muzzle before he stands and moves away. “I want you on all fours.”

Darius rushes to obey, rolling over onto his paws, his trousers around his knees. The pond is in front of him now, the water lapping at his claws, and the moonlit surface is so bright it almost hurts his eye.

Behind him, the king moves, settles, and there are fingers, slick with something he doesn't know or care what it is, stroking at his opening, sinking into him. He whines again, whines and growls and Genn's other hand pushes his shirt up to rub over his back.

“My Darius,” he says, “always so eager for this.” His voice is wrecked, broken with desire, and then, oh, then, the nails digging into Darius's hips are claws, and the king is bending over him, nuzzling at the crook of his neck, a canine nose, scenting him, canine teeth biting at him, careful not to break the skin, and he cranes his neck, offering his throat, because this is his king, the leader of his pack, and all he wants is for his submission to be accepted.

Genn licks at the line of his jaw, and pulls back a little. There is a pressure at his hole, something thicker than fingers, and it strikes him that Genn is a large man, and certainly the largest worgen he has yet seen. As a young man, Darius had felt the king's cock inside him for days after the act, and if that is so, then the worgen version must be... Must...

“Please,” he says. “Let me take it.”

“I couldn't deny you,” Genn says.

At first it's easier than he would have expected, the long, long length pushing relentlessly into him, his body pushing back, asking for it, opening for more and more until it's in to the hilt, Genn sheathed inside him. The king lays his clawed hands on Darius's shoulders, pulls out and shoves back in, once, again, and, oh, that's good, that's everything, and then, suddenly, Genn grows fully hard.

The thickness is punishing, and when he shifts, the knot inside him presses against the inside of his hole, keeping him there, impaled.

The king growls, claws digging into Darius's shoulders as his hands tighten.

“Stay,” he says, and Darius stills in his grip, makes his body relax.

“I missed you,” Genn says. “Being inside you like this. The way you would work yourself on my cock like you truly couldn't get enough.” He rocks forward, just a little, pushing as far in as he can get. “This isn't too much, is it?”

It really isn't. It's a fullness he could never have imagined, but he has always loved being filled, loved for Genn to fill him, and it's been so long. Too long.

He bears down, squeezing his body tight around Genn's shaft inside him, and this time Genn is the one who whines, low and needy.

“I'm on my knees for my king,” Darius says. “I can take that.”

“It's where you belong,” Genn says, and his voice is predatory, but also tender, filled with all the years they've lost to their battles.

“Yours,” Darius says, and Genn starts to fuck him, then. Not thrusting in and out, as he would in human form, but a rhythmic rocking of their bodies that is more than enough. Genn's swollen knot already presses steadily into Darius's prostate like nothing he's ever felt; every movement is another burst of stimulation, pleasure so sharp it's almost pain, building until he can't keep it in.

When he howls, it's torn from him, the sound rushing uncontainable from his throat, sensation and feeling too large for his body demanding release. Once he's started, he can't stop. The howling rises and sinks and rises and sinks, in time with Genn moving inside him. It feels glorious, animal pleasure into animal sound, and for a moment he wishes that it could go on forever, his body tied here, to his king's, as his heart has always been tied, even when his mind pretended otherwise. Then Genn's hand is around his cock, the soft fur on his fingers stroking down, and it cannot last. But for a second, just a second, as he spills onto the Teldrassil ground, he hears Genn howling with him, above him, and his wolf heart sings with a quiet joy.

Afterwards, when Genn has come inside him and their bodies have slid apart, when their clothes have been rearranged and Darius has lapped from the water of the pond to soothe his throat, imagining that he could taste the moonlight, they lie back against the tree root, their shoulders touching, and their human hands where they rest upon the grass.

Darius remembers nights long ago, falling asleep like this, in the king's embrace, after their bodies were sated. Remembers being woken in the morning by the Gilnean sun to do it all again.

Now, though, Gilneas is lost, and they cannot serve their people best by keeping together. Darius will go to Silverpine, and his king will go to Stormwind, and they will fight this war in separate places, each doing what needs to be done. The wolf in him does not approve – a pack should not be divided, should not depart from their leader – but as a man, he knows that dark times make for brief meetings, and he has never done less than he could in any fight. It is as must be.

Genn is the one who breaks their silence, laying his hand over Darius's on the ground, his thumb absently tracing Darius's knuckles.

“That thing I said,” he starts, “about the orcs coming to dread your howl. Consider that rescinded. If you howl the way you howled tonight, then I wish to keep that sound for my own.” He looks up sharply, and Darius turns to meet his gaze. He has never seen any strength like the strength in his king's eyes. “I will not share it with foul orcish ears.”

“In Gilneas, then,” he says, the words coming without thought, “when we run together through our own forests, side by side beneath the moon.”

He can see it so clearly, the two of them running wild through their own lands, the scent of it in their nostrils. The two of them curling up side by side in the darkness when they've worn themselves out, wrapped in each other's fur. The two of them waking in the sunlight, their human bodies tangled and warm.

“In Gilneas,” his king agrees.

Their kingdom is not lost forever.


End file.
